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R/V Marcus G. Langseth: Collecting the Data

Author:
Tyler Poppenwimer

R/V Marcus G. Langseth,

08-June-13, The Study Site

R/V Marcus G. Langseth: Collecting the Data

Hello everybody!! I am sorry that it has been a bit longer than the 3-4 days I promised but with the amount of work time my schedule involves, it is hard to blog as often, I am going to have to revise this to about every 5-6 days. I work 12 hour shifts now, starting at midnight and ending at noon, but of course that is just a rough estimate. Usually I stay a bit later and get there a bit earlier to help with the shift changes. As such, I work a bit longer than the 12 hours and plus I also have to have lunch after my shift ends and do regular things like laundry and other necessities. After this I am usually off to bed to get ready for the next day of work and so my blog writing time is getting rather small.

Anyways, since I last posted, the Langseth finished deploying all of the equipment and has begun recording data. It was a pretty exciting moment when all of the equipment was deployed in the water and the first shots from the gun fired! It was at this moment that our hopes were realized and everything was working properly. Then, when the first data from the gun shots appeared on one of the monitors in the main lab everyone cheered and was really excited. The moment of research had begun!

Now that we had begun to collect data, my work schedule, while not being reduced in the amount of time, was reduced in the physical aspect of work. With the streamers and guns out, we are hopeful that we will have little to do with these. We will have to bring the guns in every once in a while to check them but this is minor compared to the work needed for the streamers. Instead my role now consists of monitoring the various equipment using the monitors and recording data into our numerous logs.

The main lab is set up so that from any one position surrounding the main terminal you can see any of the 36 monitors that display information about the ship, the streamers, the guns, our course, and our intended lines that we need to follow to gather data. From this information, the students and I must log information every 30 minutes, when we start and end a line, and when we start and end a turn. Some of the information we log are our latitude and longitude, depth, salinity, magnetics, temperature of the ocean, speed, boat heading, wind speed, wind heading, and the current shot number (the shots are from the guns). Some of the data that we have to monitor include information regarding the depth of the streamers, the timing between gun shots, our navigation and speed, and the data to make sure nothing looks erroneous.

To help explain what I have just written, the lines are the longitudinal lines that the ship and the streamers trailing behind it are to follow so that we can make sure we cover the entire study area. They set up like the lines of the paper and once we have completed all of the lines, the streamers will have gathered data across the total area of the paper. However, as our streamers are 6km long, we can’t make a tight turn and so rather than doing the line underneath, we have to skip about 7-10 lines. This results in really long turns, of which we log the start and end, which can last about 3 hours! During these lines, which can take about 9 hours to cover, we shoot approximately 1900-2000 shots. Each shot then gives us data about the bottom of the ocean.

Other than that, life has become pretty mellow around here, if we don’t have any problems then my time should be filled with monitoring equipment and getting to talk to some of the grad students and principal investigators. Let’s hope no problems arise!! Well, that is what is going on during my time on the Langseth. Take care everyone.

- This is Tyler Poppenwimer, signing off –

Sounds like things are going well. You are learning alot about data keeping. Keep up the good work. Stay safe.
Connie

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Numbers DRL/ITEST 1312333 and DUE/ATE 1104310. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.